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Jan. 18, 2002

BELIZE – Swimming along shorelines, burrowing in holes, nesting in trees. Life presented the Earth's endangered species with the usual challenges for food and shelter on Sept. 11.

But the impact of the terrorist attacks on the United States also rippled to endangered wildlife around the globe where researchers depend on vacationing volunteers to help collect data that could save the animals' existence.

Organizers, however, have crossed fingers for early signs that this year's vacationers may actually seek more meaningful travel destinations such as the research trips.

"For a period of six or seven weeks (last fall) we had no one calling," said Blue Magruder, Earthwatch Institute director of public affairs. "But now we see many who think that volunteering for a vacation is a way of giving back. Many I've talked to have said that it just seems ‘empty' to lie on a beach for vacation."

Earthwatch Institute is an international non-profit organization with 50,000 members and supporters spread across the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. About 3,500 people of 46 nationalities volunteer to work with 120 research scientists each year on Earthwatch field research projects in more than 50 countries.

Magruder said almost 1,700 people are signed up for the volunteering research vacations this year compared to 1,604 by the same period last year. Some January research trips were cancelled, she said, because people would have booked those trips last fall – a time of such uncertainty that few were thinking of traveling.

For wildlife researchers worldwide, the uncertainly has demonstrated that stronger relationships between scientists and among the general public are vital for continued progress in saving endangered animals.

"We are saying in our profession that now more than ever we need to connect with people and reaffirm the friendships," said Dr. Jane Packard, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station wildlife researcher whose work on animal behavior has taken her across North and Central America, Europe and the Arctic Circle. "This ultimately affects all creatures. Animals cross international boundaries and actually help bring people together"

For now, the actions of a few people harmed that relationship between wildlife and humans through the cancellation of the January research trips. But scientists hope the result will rebound to yield even more interest in volunteer research trips.

Caryn Self Sullivan, a wildlife graduate student at Texas A&M University who conducts manatee research in Belize funded by Earthwatch, said the January team for her project was cancelled because it didn't have any volunteers registered. Only one of the other seven research teams scheduled for 2002 is certain at this time.

"These research teams are made up of volunteers from all walks of life – people who want to vacation doing something different and who want to feel like they've made a difference," Sullivan said.

And a different type of vacation it is. In the Belize experience, four to six people are led by two researchers in the coastal waters, making various examinations of the ecosystem in a setting that includes catching rain water to filter for drinking and using the sun to generate electric power.

For that, each person pays $1,695, which is tax-deductible since the money goes for research on endangered species.

"We've had a homemaker, retired neurosurgeon, physicists, teens, college kids, teachers – men and women and from all around the world," Sullivan said.

She hopes those people and others like them who would be likely to jump at the chance to help researchers in the wild won't reconsider.

"All non-profits are suffering at this time, including us," Sullivan said.

Many people rightly gave large amounts of money to the terrorist attack relief efforts, she said, and don't have additional funds to earmark for charitable contributions such as wildlife research. Others may choose to travel closer to their homes.

Yet, Sullivan believes, some people will opt for a wildlife research trip as a way to make a contribution to a better world.

"For most people, it is a life-changing event," Sullivan said.

The typical research vacationer, who gets to do things such as snorkeling to count seagrass blades, has not done anything comparable in the past, she said. Volunteers leave with a lesson in sustainable living coupled with firsthand observation of an endangered species.

"Our entire field research program with a budget of $48,000 a year is funding by the volunteers," she said. "If the volunteer trips don't fill, we (scientists) don't get time in the field, and without consistent field time, you can't get good data.

"To put measures in place that will help save the animals, you need good data," Sullivan stressed.

With long-lived animals such as manatees, researchers need to study them for at least a generation. Manatees can live more than 50 years in the wild.

"A manatee female begins reproducing at 4 years and may calf every three years," Sullivan explained. "So we need at least 10 years in the field to even begin to understand what changes are needed to protect the animals."

Packard hopes the current war against terrorism will have a positive impact on wildlife research.

"Our differences seem so much smaller compared to the broader goal of working together," she said.

To find out more about the manatee research vacation, contact Sullivan at caryn@sirenian.org, or call (540) 373-8205 or in Belize 501-16-6302. A Web site with more information can be accessed at http://www.sirenian.org/ or visit the Earthwatch site at http://www.earthwatch.org/ to explore volunteer research opportunities around the world.

MANATEE SIDEBAR

BELIZE – Manatees are part of a scientific order that has four species, according to Caryn Self Sullivan, who with Katie LaCommare conducts a manatee research program in Belize funded by Earthwatch Institute.

Sullivan, a doctoral student in the wildlife and fisheries sciences department at Texas A&M University, has gotten to know many of the individual manatees she has observed in the waters off this Central American country.

"We're building a photo identification catalogue of each animal," Sullivan notes. "I can tell them apart. They have significant scars. Many have cuts from boat propellers, or they have unique nicks and tears in their tail."

Sullivan's research focus is on manatee behavior while LaCommare, a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, is examining the role of these animals in the ecological system.

Here are some other facts Sullivan offers on manatees:

*Their closest living relative is the elephant.

*It is the entire order - the sirenians - that is endangered, not just one species within that order. There are only four species remaining in the order. That compares to the primate order which has 270 species including humans.

*Sirenians include three species of manatees and a dugong -- all are commonly called sea cows or mermaids.

* Sirenians are distributed around the globe, many in the waters of developing countries where there are few resources for conservation efforts. In a few places, aboriginal hunting still is legal.

*In the United States, only Florida has a population of manatees in its waters year-round, they travel north at least as far as Virginia during summer months.

* The biggest problem facing manatee survival is human-related. People are competing for space along the coastlines where manatees live and eat. When people develop property along coastlines, the runoff and sedimentation smothers seagrass and aquatic vegetation in the shallow waters where manatees live.

*A mother manatee and her calf stay together for up to two years as she teaches the younger one to survive. The need for that relationship must to be protected for the survival of the species.

For more information, see http://www.sirenian.org/